Zarina sighed, giving up on the idea of digging deeper. It was obvious this particular conversation was finished. She flipped the vial’s protective case over in her hands, looking for signs of damage.
“No, I’m not injecting it into any bears,” she told him after she was satisfied it was completely intact. “It was designed around the specific serum used on you and tailored for your particular hybrid variant. It would have no effect on a bear at all. Or any other animal for that matter.”
Tanner grunted “That’s good, I guess.” He turned his attention back to the ax in his hand and the big log standing on its end in front of him. “Not that it matters, since I’m not taking it.”
“I know,” she said. “You’ve already mentioned that to me several times.”
Tanner’s jaw twitched a little, like he wanted to say something, but he didn’t. Instead, he bounced the ax in his hands a few times, then swung it violently over his head, slamming it into the log in front of him and splitting it neatly in two. He then moved over to the next log he’d already set up and whacked that one in half, too, before turning his attention to the next, and the next, and the next. After he split all of them, he patiently collected up the pieces, brought them back to the center of the flat piece of ground he’d been working on, and set them up to do it all over again. He’d been doing this same thing for over an hour like he was some kind of machine.
Zarina didn’t say anything, either. Mostly because she was too busy eyeing Tanner’s bare chest and enjoying the way his sweat-covered muscles flexed and strained in the cool mountain air as he worked. She’d seen him without his shirt plenty of times before, but she still found herself transfixed at the sight of his broad shoulders, thick pecs, bulging biceps, and rippling abs. Even that little trail of dark-gold hair that led from his belly button down into his jeans was mesmerizing.
When she’d come out here with him to the far end of the camp where the firewood supply was stacked up as tall as she was, it had been with the idea of getting Tanner alone for a serious conversation. Regardless of whether anyone could overhear or not, she still would have preferred it to be somewhere more private, but Tanner was worried about getting too far from the camp in case those jerks with the guns came back.
It wasn’t a perfect place, but it would do.
She’d come here intending to follow Lillie’s advice and ask him why he wouldn’t consider taking the antiserum. If that conversation went well, maybe they could talk openly about how they felt about one another, too. But instead of talking, Zarina had spent more time gazing at him like she was now. She tried to tell herself it was to make sure the injuries he’d gotten yesterday in the fight with the hybrids had healed properly, but in truth, she was ogling him because he was so damn hot. It was almost embarrassing to be so discombobulated at the sight of his bare chest that she couldn’t think straight, but she was powerless. It was like his body had been designed specifically to enthrall her.
Some of her reticence also had to do with the fact that Tanner wasn’t simply against the idea of taking the antiserum. He seemed to completely hate the idea that it was even out here in the woods with him. When she had pulled out the case, he’d looked at her like he thought she was going to yank it out and jab the syringe in his neck when he wasn’t looking.
Although, if she was being honest, the biggest reason she hadn’t brought up the subject of the antiserum—or the fact that she loved him—was because she was a big chicken and not nearly as bold as Lillie apparently was.
Sighing, she popped open the plastic protective case around the vial and studied the auto-injector nestled inside. She sagged with relief. The case for the serum was rugged and well built, but her pack had been jostled around a lot over the past couple of days, so she’d been a little worried. The antiserum had taken her a year and a half to create. To say it was valuable was an understatement.
Thankfully, the auto-injector was fine. She’d been worried it might have been accidentally triggered or started to leak. Not that either of those things was likely, but then again, she hadn’t exactly planned to carry the thing around with her for so long. She thought she’d administer it to Tanner the moment she found him. She had multiple degrees in everything from genetics to medicine, and she still didn’t understand the male half of the species.
“Shouldn’t that thing be kept in a refrigerator?” Tanner asked as he wedged the ax head out of a gnarled log that didn’t seem to want to let the blade go.
He asked the question so casually, she’d almost think he didn’t care about the answer one way or the other, but the look in his eyes made her think he was more concerned about the drug than he let on.
“No, because it’s not a live vaccine,” she explained patiently. “It isn’t protein based at all, for that matter. I constructed it using catalytic RNA molecules so it would be stable for longer periods of time at ambient temperatures. It’s less likely to break down in your body as well.”
“I don’t really know what any of that means,” he murmured. “But it doesn’t matter. I’m still not taking it.”
She bit her tongue to keep from saying something she’d regret and put the case back in her pack. She wanted to ask Tanner what the hell his problem
